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It can all go to zero

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121–130 of 361 posts

Re: It can all go to zero

#121
post #33

Time for the monthly cryptocurrency panic thread. While I fully agree that most cryptocurrencies are grossly overvalued, these articles always pretend a 20% selloff is the beginning of the end, when, in crypto land, 20% selloffs are a pretty standard bad day for the market.

People who see and call out bubbles are always wrong N-1 times where N is the number of times a prediction is made.

Look at the fundamentals. What we have here is a bad currency (volatile and deflationary) whose utility is diminishing as its price increases.

There aren't a lot of value investors in cryptocurrency at this point. The vast majority of the people who hold it are holding it on the theory that it will continue to appreciate, but it can only do that if more money comes in. If these "HODL"ers start to believe that no more money will come in they will sell to lock in their gains. Once it starts this will easily become a self-reinforcing panic sell-off a.k.a. a bank run.

Let's say it goes higher. Let's say it goes up another 1000%. That doesn't change these fundamentals. If anything it makes the situation even more volatile. Most people look at price charts in linear not logarithmic mode, making moves look larger at higher prices. This makes panic selling more likely.

Re: It can all go to zero

#123
post #108
post #32

If Bitcoin goes to 0, I will buy all of it and display the Trezor that stores it in a museum

If people stop mining it then you can't buy it. Remember, with the current design if hash power suddenly drops enough then the network just stops.

Wow so it can you drop to zero in a very real sense before it even drops to say $40?!?

Re: It can all go to zero

#124

At this point, Bitcoin is not much more than a phantom object. Too overpriced to use for any reasonable purchase, people are literally trading nothing but zeros and ones, no more or less valuable than the bits making up this comment. All that can change, but only if the price drops back down to its 2016 to early 2017 values, and there are too many people invested at this price to let Bitcoin survive as an actual curr…

Too overpriced to use for any reasonable purchase Could one have a cryptocurrency which is always subdividable? Are there any which already have this feature?

bitcoin is subdividable but transactions end up costing 30 bucks and taking hours because of the overinflated price

Re: It can all go to zero

#125
post #32

If Bitcoin goes to 0, I will buy all of it and display the Trezor that stores it in a museum

You're right. Bitcoin was a significant and interesting technological step even if it ultimately fails in other ways. As long as we have a civilisation there will always be someone prepared to run a miner and own some for historical interest. Maybe 0 isn't right for bitcoin but it is possible for it to go incredibly low and there are altcoins for which there isn't even any historical interest....

> As long as we have a civilisation

That is a crazy claim.

Re: It can all go to zero

#126
post #33

Time for the monthly cryptocurrency panic thread. While I fully agree that most cryptocurrencies are grossly overvalued, these articles always pretend a 20% selloff is the beginning of the end, when, in crypto land, 20% selloffs are a pretty standard bad day for the market.

The way I understand it bitcoin is guaranteed to go to zero by design because there is a fixed limit on issue and so eventually there will be no incentive to mine and the network will collapse.

Re: It can all go to zero

#128
post #76
post #33

Time for the monthly cryptocurrency panic thread. While I fully agree that most cryptocurrencies are grossly overvalued, these articles always pretend a 20% selloff is the beginning of the end, when, in crypto land, 20% selloffs are a pretty standard bad day for the market.

The trend of 15-20% swings is well documented in Bitcoin history, no doubts about that. Crypto is a young economy in general, and it's been thrilling for me (on the outside, as I don't speculate or hold) to watch. But I don't know. If you play with the zoom levels on price tracking sites, the $20k peak onward has been a pretty steady downward trend. BTC is down 20% over three days, down nearly 23% over a week. Is tha…

This is what happens when mania dies down. Everyone who "invested" at >10K are not seeing the enormous returns. Those people are more likely to have never heard of bitcoin before this year. They didn't put in money because of a financial revolution. They put money in to make an easy buck. Those people also represent a significantly larger chunk of the market capitalization. When they lose money they won't come back.

Re: It can all go to zero

#129
the part that really resonated with me was:

I don’t want to make money on short-term financial trades, but rather by helping create new things over the long-term.

Anyone else have comments on this? I’ve been thinking this lately as well

Re: It can all go to zero

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were you around a few years back to see real estate values drop from $300K to $25K? I saw that. And we are talking about a physical property. $25K is not zero, but it would be hard to distinguish the effective difference if you're leveraged $250K. So, as with any investment, if you're spending monopoly money on cryptocurrencies, scoff away. But if your retirement depends on it...

$300k to $25K? That seems awfully cheap. Where did prices drop so much?

Condo towers in Miami that were being put up and finished as the crash arrived, were often entirely empty and couldn't find any buyers. You could buy cheaper units for $30k to $50k. It was common to see 50%-70% haircuts, drops from $180k to $90k etc. Over six years (2003-2009), Miami added 23,000 condo units for a city of 400k. In Dec 2008, nearly half of those remained unsold.

Las Vegas saw some similar action. It suffered the worst overall top to bottom crash of any major city in the US.

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